For 525 years, the historic libraries, archives and museum of the University of Aberdeen have been enriched by donations, gifts and acquisitions leading to collections which are now of international significance. As a curator of that historic material, Jane Pirie identifies key donors and figures involved in the care and formation of collections from the founding of King’s and Marischal Colleges through to their union in the University of Aberdeen.

This podcast focuses on the career of one of the University’s major benefactors at the turn of the twentieth Century, its Forres-born Chancellor Donald Smith, Lord Strathcona from 1897. It traces his connection to the University and then tracks back, looking at how he acquired wealth and prestige at the heart of the transition in British North America from a fur trading empire to a settler-dominated confederation. It contributes to the consideration of legacies of empire in and beyond the University today by emphasising the need to take account of the multifaceted nature of empire itself.

In this year of the 525th anniversary of the University of Aberdeen, its Department of Economics is also celebrating an anniversary – the centenary of the Jaffrey Chair in Political Economy. This podcast by Economics Professor Keith Bender highlights the life of Sir Thomas Jaffrey Bt, the early 20th century Aberdonian banker and philanthropist who endowed the Chair, and explores the history of the Department of Economics through the seven people who have held the Chair.

Cairns Craig, Glucksman Professor of Irish and Scottish Studies, recounts the influence of the first holder of the chair in English Literature at Aberdeen University, Professor H.J.C. Grierson. Grierson was closely involved with major poets of the early twentieth century, such as W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, because of the influence of his edition of the poems of John Donne (OUP, 1912), which set the standard for the critical analysis of poetry for next half century.

This podcast explores the life and influence of the Rev. James Ramsay, an Anglican priest, ship’s surgeon, and pioneering abolitionist who was educated at King’s College between 1749 and 1753.

In 1773 James Beattie, professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Marischal College, Aberdeen, visited London to petition (successfully) for a royal pension on the back of his sudden fame as author of An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, In Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism (1770), an attack on the ‘infidelity’ of the times, and the writings of David Hume in particular. Beattie’s philosophy and poetry sheds light not only on the debates that animated King’s and Marischal colleges in the eighteenth century, but also on the role of the Aberdeen Enlightenment in the development of Romanticism in Scotland and beyond.

The intellectual history of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, known as the ‘Wise Club’ after its founding in 1758, maps onto the institutional history of King’s and Marischal colleges in the eighteenth century. The proceedings of philosophical and literary societies were woven into the fabric of eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment intellectual culture, and, in particular, they promoted collaborative knowledge exchange within a university community.

The endowment of a chair in Mathematics in 1613 was one of Duncan Liddel's most important legacies for Marischal College. Professor Friedrich discusses Liddel's impact on the exchange of knowledge during the Northern European Renaissance and its transmission to and from Scotland.

From its inception the purpose of Marischal College is fascinating. Most historical discussion has centred on its being a more seriously ‘Protestant’ alternative to the Episcopal (by which many mean crypto-Catholic) King’s College in Old Aberdeen. Unfortunately, this does not hold up to scrutiny. Founded as a civic university that catered to the sons of Aberdeen’s elite, Marischal prepared young men for careers in medicine, religion, and ‘commerce’ (broadly defined). Consequently, King’s and Marischal developed different international ‘profiles’ that reflected their diverging institutional objectives. What defined Marischal from its inception to the union of the two colleges in 1860 was its international student mobility both in students leaving Marischal for a life abroad and for those coming to Aberdeen from the far corners not only of the British imperial world but even further afield. Professor Naphy surveys the global and institutional history of Marischal College from its founding to the union of 1860. Marischal may have started as an institution for educating the children of local elites but the civic university attracted international students as an ideal destination to prepare young men for public life, which gradually elevated its reputation beyond the northeast of Scotland as an institution firmly embedded not only in Aberdeen but also the wider world. Find the transcript online: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/resources/index.php#panel1550

King’s College has a prehistory. Dr Jackson Armstrong (Senior Lecturer in History, University of Aberdeen) sheds new light on the founding of King’s College as a kingdom-building endeavour that underscored Scottish engagement with the age of the renaissance. This involved the tenure of Archdeacon John Barbour at the medieval cathedral of St Machar’s by the Don, who in the 1380s composed The Brus—an epic poem that is considered to be the foundational work of Scots literature—and in the chantry chaplains of St Nicholas in the adjacent royal burgh on the Dee. Transcript for this episode: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/resources/index.php#panel1550